


We've Got Time

by BeaRyan



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Becho, Bechophy, Clarke makes an appearance but not enough to tag, F/F, F/M, Memori - Freeform, Multi, OT3, Time Loop, Time Travel, all of them - Freeform, also sometimes they die but they don't stay dead and it's not graphic, everyone is bi, final ship is the one tagged, murven - Freeform, ring fic, so if you have a hard notp and can't take it for a paragraph skip this fic, they combine and recombine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 08:03:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20690195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/pseuds/BeaRyan
Summary: The anomaly has its way with Murphy and sends him back four waking years (more or less) over and over again.  It's a basic rom com premise, but this is Murphy so expect the occasional disaster and a non traditional happily ever after.  Please read the tags.





	We've Got Time

John took a long pull on the algae moonshine Bellamy had brought with them for old time’s sake and immediately regretted it. The green burned on the way down before punching him in the stomach. There was a reason Monty usually only made beer. 

Bellamy asked, “You loosened up enough yet to say it?”

“Say what?”

“Whatever it is that’s eating at you. You’re getting married in two days. Maybe.” 

John’s moonshine threatened to make its way back out. “Emori doesn’t want to get married?” 

“She does, at least as far as I know. I’m not sure you do.” 

John looked away and hoped an answer would emerge from the Sanctum forest. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get married. He loved her. She loved him. They could go on like this forever. Literally forever. “She was my first love. My first… everything that didn’t suck. I can’t ... imagine a life without her.”

“Lie to someone else.” Bellamy took a swig from the shared bottle and winced. His voice was raspy when he spoke. “It’s your imagination that’s killing you, isn’t it? You mean it when you say you’ll never hurt her again, but for you it also means there are a lot of things - a lot of people - you’ll never do.” 

“It doesn’t even matter. My options are a bunch of Sanctum idiots who think I’m a god and most of the rest really enjoy hurting people. I’m not into pain.” 

“You and Emori can always go for the triad with Raven.”

The words took a moment to process, and when a coherent thought finally formed Murphy was sure he’d misunderstood something. “Raven’s into threesomes?” 

“No. A threesome is three people having sex. Grounders also have three person relationships. A one-two is one person with two partners, like a salesman with one family in the country and another in Polis. A triad is mutual all the way around.”

John’s mind continued to stumble. Raven was into triads? How would Bellamy even - “You lying piece of shit. I asked you if you were screwing both of them and you said no.” 

“Yeah, well, at the time I had two girlfriends and keeping them happy was more important than being honest with you.” 

John snatched the moonshine he didn’t really want away from Bellamy and made a show of taking a drink. Coughing ruined the alpha male effect, but it’s not like Bellamy didn’t know him to his core anyway. 

Bellamy bumped Murphy’s shoulder with his own. “Have you ever even asked Emori how closed she wants your relationship to be?” 

Not only hadn’t he asked, the idea had always seemed awful to him. He didn’t share well and he knew it. Emori had mentioned a threesome once and he’d spent the next week having nightmares of her moaning under Bellamy. Raven, though. Raven was already a part of Emori’s life. She filled a spot he knew he didn’t, and it was OK. While there might be some in bed particulars that Raven was better at than him, there were some things that only he could do. 

Raven. The three of them. It was a thought. A hell of a thought. A fantasy he might coast on for a little while. 

“Of course bringing all this up right before or after your wedding would be a mistake. You’re going to need to sit on this for at least six months. It’s not like you don’t have time,” Bellamy teased. “Stick with just Emori while you’re in this body and then when she jacks you into a new one you can bring Raven into it.” 

“You planning on killing me in six months?” The others had accept his dabbling with Primehood and it was now fair game for their jokes. For him it was still a tender subject. 

“No, but if we don’t get moving the anomaly might. Coming fast.” 

Murphy looked where Bellamy was pointing but hadn’t yet worked out the distance of the swirling green threat when everything went black. 

XXX

Murphy woke up with a headache and a vague sense of movement. The overhead lights were too bright, but then they almost always were on this part of the ring. Why was he on this part of the ring? Hell, why was he on the ring at all? 

With a groan he sat up. He drew no comfort from the familiarity of the too thin mattress and scratchy blanket that had been his unhappy home before they left this place for the last time. Shit. He didn’t have the knowledge to run the ring. He wouldn’t wish life here on any of his family but if he was here alone he was well and truly fucked. 

He staggered down the hall, head pounding, until he found a tap and gulped down a glass of water he hoped wasn’t contaminated. It helped some. Sitting down again helped more. 

“How’s that hangover?” 

Bellamy, looking freshly showered and shaved but wrung out all the same, stood over him with one hand on the wall and the other reaching for tap. 

Murphy’s mind grasped at threads. Hangover. He’d been drinking with Bellamy on Sanctum. A hangover made sense. “I’m hurting. Baby Green makes some powerful moonshine.” 

Bellamy squinted then shook his head. “What’s the last thing you remember?” 

“You were explaining your triad to me.” 

Bellamy’s face flashed through a series of panicked expressions. It would have been comedic, but Murphy was too distracted by the lack of wrinkles and how thin Bellamy looked to enjoy the show. 

“You can’t tell them I told you about that. They’ll kill me.” 

Raven’s voice cut through the air like a sword. “I’m not going to kill you, but I am done sleeping with you.”

Bellamy muttered, “Fuck.”

Echo answered, “I don’t know who you plan to fuck. I, too, am stung by your betrayal. I thought we were making progress, but now the trust we’ve built is destroyed yet again.” 

The little bands of woven material, Harper’s friendship bracelets, caught Murphy’s eye. They’d worn those in year two on the ring but never gotten the blood out after Harper’s accident. He was in ring year two. 

And he stayed there. 

Time moved forward again at the rate it had before. There were a few differences.

This time he talked to Emori when he was jealous and he never moved to his own side of the ring. 

This time Echo and Raven were dating when they went down to earth. 

This time Bellamy was the one who slept with Pria. 

He still got hit by the anomaly the day before his wedding to Emori. 

XXX

When he woke up on his bunk back on the ring for the second loop he stayed in bed. Not again. Not this again. How the hell had Monty and Harper chosen to spend eternity marooned on a spaceship with just the two of them? He’d lived with his family in space for 11 years already and the thought of doing it again was agony. Maybe if he just stayed in bed this would all be a dream when he woke up. Could the anomaly reach him here? Where was here? Maybe they weren’t over earth this time. A guy could dream. 

There had to be a reason for this. Some grand purpose. He’d been talking to Bellamy about triads the first time he got sucked back in time. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was supposed to turn his twosome with Emori into a threesome with Raven and then this shit would stop. 

Getting out of bed was the first step. He’d used the tap towards the mess hall last time. This time he went left, to the workshop. It was the place he was most likely to find Emori or Raven. 

The water was cool, his head ached less after a drink, and Emori smiled at him when she walked into the workshop. The way she wore her hair marked this as the third year on the ring. A good time for them, and he was pretty sure Raven has stopped sleeping with Bellamy and Echo by then. So far so good. 

“What do you think about a threesome with Raven?” 

Emori threw a wrench at him and left. 

Triad! He should have said triad! Dammit. Right now he needed to make up with Emori. That was priority one.

He did. 

They never broke up. 

Whatever Raven, Bellamy, and Echo were doing in secret ended in secret. 

And the anomaly hit him the day before his wedding. 

XXX

Same thin mattress, same rough blanket, but the room was cleaner this time. The progress he’d made clearing out the space told him exactly when this was. He and Emori had already started having problems. He was making a place where he could retreat when her giggles with Raven and Bellamy’s benevolent smiles were too much to take. A place where no one asked him to do things he didn’t know how to do. Being alone was less lonely than being with people you thought loved everyone more than you.

He’d talk to Emori this time. Their relationship was probably too far gone to be saved from time apart, but he could talk to her. He could try. She deserved that much. She might not know how much she’d been through with him, but he did. In his life they’d been together for almost two decades. When he’d asked her to try to love him forever he thought she’d know that forever was happening. 

Later that night he said, “I love you and I know you love me, but sometimes I think you love Raven more. That scares me, and when I’m scared I’m kind of an asshole.”

One tear rolled down Emori’s face, and when he brushed it away more followed. “I do love you, John. But I love her, too. You were my first everything. My only everything. Then we got to the ring and my world opened up with possibilities.”

In this timeline their break up wasn’t bitter, but the aftermath was. Seeing Raven and Emori together and happy hurt more than just being apart ever had. He didn’t have to suffer it long. Less than a year later Emori and Raven should have both gone on the spacewalk to repair the hull, but Raven claimed Emori didn’t have the dual handed dexterity for the job and insisted she stay inside to work the computer. Monty went out instead. He tore his suit and died. Algae was harder to manage than any of them realized. As Murphy prayed for death to end the pain of his stomach digesting his organs he vowed to make the others understand what happened in the bunker better if he ever got the chance. 

XXX

He lost track of how many loops he lived. In one he dated Raven and without Shaw they all died in the valley. In another he tried to date Raven and she slapped him for trying to cheat on Emori. Occasionally they managed to have a relationship and he grew to appreciate not just being the good guy but being known as a moral and trustworthy person. In most of them he dated Emori. She was both his rock and the wind in his sails. He was better with her. No matter what he did, he was always sent back to the ring. Again and again he traveled through time and across the universe trying and failing to get it right. Eventually he stopped trying. Things happened and there was no rhyme or reason to it. 

Still, curiosity was a bitch and moonshine gave you an excuse to do and say things you wouldn’t otherwise. 

Around Ring Day 1500 in this continuity, as he watched Emori and Raven huddled over some piece of machinery, he leaned against Echo and sighed. 

His girls were close to each other in this timeline and neither was intimate with or antagonistic to him. Maybe he could get it right this time, and if right wasn’t in his cards maybe he could still have a hell of a good time.

His head rolled back against the couch cushion, relaxed by half a beer after a hard day’s work and familiar enough with the assassin after a century her normal cool didn’t phase him. She might not know how much they’d been through together, but he did. He knew she would roll with whatever came at her, and so he asked the question, “How do you start a triad?” 

A slight quirk of Echo’s eyebrow was all that gave away her interest. “Is that something you want?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“I’m sure I’d like to try.” 

She gave his hand a squeeze. “The mess hall isn’t the right place to explore this. Meet me in my room in five minutes.” 

She said her goodnights and left. Five minutes later he did the same. 

Bellamy was waiting for him, arms crossed and face inscrutable when Murphy entered their room. “You asked Echo about a triad?”

Murphy nodded and immediately realized his mistake. “I should have talked to you instead of her.”

Bellamy shook his head. “It’s fine. Unexpected, but fine.” 

Echo smirked. “Unexpected by you.” 

Murphy wasn’t even surprised when Bellamy shoved him against the wall, but the kiss that followed it completely threw him. 

He got his triad. Twenty-three glorious, insane months of triad with Bellamy and Echo. It wasn’t a relationship built to last, but among all the timelines this was one that would never blur into any other. If he had his life to live over again - and odds were he did - he didn’t know if he’d choose to go through those highs and lows again. There was little middle ground with Bellamy, and Echo followed where he led. 

Their break up was as spectacular as their sex, and by the time the valley was destroyed he still felt like a raw nerve. 

The night before they went into cryo he fucked Clarke, both of them trying to soothe pains of the heart with actions of the body. They fell asleep talking about lives lived too impulsively, and parted awkwardly in the morning. 

When Josie told him Clarke was dead he vowed to get revenge on her behalf. He took the news to the group and they made a plan, one that respected his fear of hell, the group’s need for a home, and the danger presented by the Primes. Clarke survived and thanked him and then ignored him. Whatever they’d had it was apparently a one night only meeting of the bodies. So be it. 

The next few weeks were a flurry of activity and the sharp edges on his relationships with Bellamy, Echo and Clarke softened under the grind of building a new world. At least he wouldn’t be drinking algae moonshine when the anomaly hit him. That didn’t stop him from dwelling on the wedding he’d never yet had and the ending he knew was coming for him and this timeline. 

On his last day he tracked down Raven huddled over some tech with Emori. “I’m going for a walk. I need you to let me out of the fence.” 

“The fence is down permanently. You know that.” 

He probably should but keeping track of details like that had faded in importance over the years. It’s not like he could carry a spreadsheet through the loops. He’d tried. He’d tried avoiding the anomaly but it always found him. He’d died several times, too. Purgatory probably had a lot in common with his loops.

“Yeah. I just forgot.” 

Emori’s eyes scanned over him, soft and concerned. Even when they weren’t lovers the love between them was palpable. “Wandering through the forest isn't a good idea.” 

“You’d be surprised how well I know my way around.”

“We’ll go with you,” Raven announced. 

He’d had this argument before. No one else was consciously looping with him, and his guilt at putting Raven in the brace was his own problem. If she decided she could hike his job was to respect her decision. 

“I’ve only got a small flask of whiskey.” He tried to trade a look with her, but in this timeline they’d never had solemn discussions about their alcoholic mothers and their own fraught relationships with alcohol and pain. “I can leave it if you want.” 

Raven said, “It’s OK to bring it.” As she followed Emori out she stopped next to him and added, “Thanks for asking.” 

They let him lead, and he took them to his favorite spot. If he only had half an hour left in this timeline he wanted to see the double sunset one more time with his two favorite women. He settled on the edge of a rock outcropping with his legs dangling over the void and Emori and Raven took seats on either side of him. 

Emori’s posture was stiff and her eyes darted around the forest behind them and the drop off below. “It’s going to eclipse and we’re going to throw each other off this cliff.” 

He grasped her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s not going to eclipse. I promise.” 

“And if you’re wrong?” 

“I’m not, but if I am then I’m immune to it and I’ll take care of you.” He looked to Raven and took her hand, too. “Both of you.” He kissed their hands. “I promise.” 

Raven asked, “What’s going on here Murphy?”

It had gone badly the times he’d tried it before but they’d barely have a chance to get through one round of calling him crazy before the anomaly would grab him again. 

He said, “It’s decision time and I love you both. With Emori I’m not just free to run down my wildest desires but supported as I do it. All my crazy is supercharged with her, and that’s not always a good thing. With Raven I feel called to be a better person. It’s harder and I spend a lot of time worrying about not living up to her standards, but it’s a more peaceful life.” He huffed a frustrated breath then glanced between the two of them. “What would you do if you were me?” 

Raven’s stare was that mix of incredulous and superior that reminded him of his worst days in a classroom. She said, “You have not one but two mechanics in your life problem and you’ve been trying to work through this alone?” 

He smiled at her, gently trying to remind her that she didn’t have to attack him the way she attacked life. “No disrespect meant, Ray Ray. I’m just out of time and already missing you both.” 

“How can you miss me when I’m the only person you haven’t slept with?” 

He bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from smiling or laughing. This was the reality she knew. “My poor judgement isn’t exactly a secret. Promise me you won’t slap me and I’ll give you a kiss you won’t soon forget.” It was a lie. He had four minutes left. Ending this timeline kissing Raven wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

Raven leaned forward to trade a glance with Emori then nodded. “Change my life, Murph.” 

A soft and sweet beginning grew into a slight graze of teeth against her lips. She liked it when he held the base of her skull, a bit of dominance but not a threat. She liked certainty in an uncertain world and he could give that to her. When he heard the little whimper she meant her libido was taking the lead over her rational mind he pulled away. He didn’t have time for more. Only two minutes left. 

Raven leaned back on her elbows and Emori tipped back slightly so they could trade looks behind his back. He resisted the urge to scoot back and block their silent conversation. 

Emori leaned forward and caught his eye. “Now I feel left out.” 

“Let me make it up to you.” He’d kissed Emori and tasted loss at least a hundred times before. He didn’t want this moment to be another one of those. Happiness might be fleeting, but for a moment he could grab it here with her. He pulled away when the knowledge of the time they wouldn’t have together after this became too much to bear. 

He lay back between them and clasped their hands to his chest as he waited for the anomaly. 

They leaned over him and kissed each other. 

The anomaly came quickly, as it always did, and he pulled them down against him, shielding their heads as best he could from the wind and the noise. 

Everything went green then black then gray as early evening twilight.

The rock poking him in the back became uncomfortable with the weight of Emori and Raven pressing down on him. Hesitantly he asked, “Everyone ok?” 

The women sat up and nodded, and he sat up between them with their hands still clasped in his. His heart pounded. A new future stretched out ahead of him and without the certainty of a second chance he’d have to live with his mistakes. 

The silence held uncomfortably long but neither woman pulled her hand free. 

Finally Emori spoke. “I know you both have experience with triads and Raven and I have talked about it a little, but can we take it slowly? You both mean more to me than I can say, and I don’t want to mess this up.” 

Murphy’s kiss was gentle, patient, and hopeful. “There’s no rush. We’ve got time.”


End file.
